Ecobuild Courses

Straw Fest  

4th November 2017 

 A Mini Food & Music Festival

 at Rock Farm Slane

Straw Fest is an Autumn celebration of artisan and organic food supported by the Boyne Valley Food Seriesand Slane Food Circle. It is also part of our relatively new tradition of celebrating the bounty around the time of the Autumn Equinox at Rock Farm, in previous years, when we've had plenty of produce to share. Harvest festival at Rock Farm is a time of hard work and joy as we reap the rewards of months of careful growing of vegetables and fruit.

 We celebrating that joy by sharing produce, song and film together to gather our thoughts and plans for the Winter ahead.

 We look forward to sharing that experience with you!

 FARMER'S MARKET & FARM TOURS 

 This year we are focussing on the combined talents of the local producers from the Slane Food Circle as well as other Boyne Valley Food Series producers:

 (11am to 5pm) Farmer's Market with artisan food, teas and coffees around the Strawbale Farm Office 

 (12pm - 4pm) Tours of Gold-certified Ecotourism Glamping overlooking Slane Castle and our new Strawbale Eco-Guesthouse (the Lime House) 

 (12pm to 4.30pm) Pop-up Pizza  

 Fresh homemade pizzas in our 2 wood-fired clay pizza ovens. Choose your own ingredients and wait for a new taste sensation €10/pizza.

 (2pm) Organic Farm Walk hosted by Alex Mount Charles (Slane Castle Whiskey Distillery) 

 (3pm) Green Building Workshop with Carina Mount Charles starting at the Strawbale Farm Office.

 Tickets will be sold separately for this event

 This one-hour condensed workshop will consist of a short presentation on our strawbale building project showing the different types of strawbale buildings (loading-bearing and timber-frame). We will then take a walk around the project to visit the different types of buildings. As part of our permaculture ethos we endeavour to use everything we grow from the straw from the barley fields for building to food and human waste (urine and humanure) for composting. The small residue of grey water and foul waste that we can't use goes into our new Integrated Constructed Wetland, which is at construction stage.

 This is a unique opportunity to see and learn about a variety of green building techniques and domestic-sized green waste management facilities. We have self-built compost toilets, Separett and Dubbletten compost toilets, an Aquatron, ICW as well as wormeries, bokashi buckets and a farm-scale composting system. 

THE LONG TABLE FEAST

(5:30pm - 10pm) No food event should be without its feast. This unique dining experience will be held in our new strawbuild the Lime House. This is an opportunity to break bread with friends old and new and share in the abundance of the harvest. Please bring a sharing plate of your own produce or invention to share at the table and in exchange you will get to sample the best of our local produce. 

 We will finish the evening with a campfire and an acoustic session in the Pit beside the Lime House from the Wednesday Gang from Boyle's Pub in Slane (http://boylesofslane.com).

 For more details on Rock Farm Slane, please seewww.rockfarmslane.ie